Before The Rooster Crows. Peter Kimani. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 2002. 174 pp. $16.95, cloth. African Books Collective.
In his first novel, Before the Rooster Crows, Peter Kimani, a Kenyan playwright who also has published poetry, opens the story with his main character, Muriuki, about to begin his journey from the peri-urban settlements of Nairobi to the city of Gichuka.
From the beginning of the novel, Kimani uses a dark undertone in the narrative and the story follows a relatively traditional path: the main character's departure and separation from his family in the village unfolds into a rite of passage in a contemporary urban environment. Unsurprisingly, none of the complex series of events that Muriuki experiences bring him the success he seeks. His departure is first spiced by a flow of childhood memories, but as soon as he arrives in Gichuka, these memories give way to wonder at busy city life. His first impressions are fast evaporating and the other faces of the city are revealed.
This is where the story takes on deeper and more interesting dimensions: when the city begins to show its true nature, Muriuki changes with it. From a man expecting success, hoping to get a job and naively wishing to find his lost girlfriend unchanged from her old village self, he grows into someone who in unfavourable circumstances must define who he really is. His discovery is ambiguous and hardly happy:
"Muriuki could not understand his new-found courage. It wasn't courage really, but a feeling of freedom that he never knew existed. Daring anyone to a duel. Freedom in its totality; without a worry. It was the kind of feeling that enveloped him during his schooldays every Friday. Friday evening was the day to slide on the mud without caring if their shorts were soiled, and to retire at night without worrying what time to wake. It felt like Friday again; but instead of soiling his shorts, he was careless with his life."
The reader can expect the turning point to be when Muriuki's optimism ends. In the chain of adversities and setbacks his almost self-destructive empowerment eventually loosens its grip. Yet, he has not entirely abandoned his old self. What keeps him going is his haunting inner monologue, reminding him of the promises he made to his expectant siblings and his mother to "return, whether things worked out or not." Naturally, not fulfilling their expectations of success would be regarded as a failure and would shame the whole family.
Chapter by chapter, Muriuki and his girlfriend Mumbi are getting closer to their terrible fate, and as the biblical title of the novel insinuates, their relationship is filled with ethical dilemmas. In their economic desperation they are ready to sacrifice the most precious: their love.
Peter Kimani's novel is ethically loaded to the extreme and the author seems to be asking readers how far are they would be prepared to go in similar circumstances. The juxtaposition, again, is somewhat traditional but to the point. On one hand the village offers a safe but monotonous life, harvesting in the plantation day after day without hope of anything better. On the other hand, the city offers nothing but another type of economic trap. Muriuki's story evolves into a criticism of a society where the role of less fortunate citizens is to be helpless pawns in political games and in which injustice and corruption reign. Muriuki summarizes, "Something is terribly wrong."
Muriukis's country is betraying him, and his fate is partly (if not entirely) the result of the colonial legacy. One episode in the novel describes how the chain of violence in the form of social exclusion and racism still goes on. A white judge, descended from the former British East Africa Protectorate, regards himself among the "expatriates [who] are an endangered species in this part of the world." When the opportunity arises, he finally gets revenge for his own family tragedy. Because of this, Muriuki pays the highest price. Muriuki and Mumbi's despair sometimes nears cathartic dimensions and the author's use of religious metaphors reflects a strong moral discourse. In the end, Muriuki's tragedy culminates in the poignant memory of his mother saying, "When you get good things, do not forget us."
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Even though Peter Kimani does not go far beyond the threshold of the black-white division, he creates a remarkable tension in the narrative, which only deepens as the story goes on. Yet somehow I would have hoped that the characters were psychologically more credible. Their voices come through only half way, as if they were designed for a play rather than a novel. Having said this, Kimani's novel gave me the appetite to read his earlier plays because he clearly has a talent for bringing tension and drama to a story. And as much as this novel was stretched with too many ingredients too quickly, it left me with curiosity and the hope of reading more of Kimani's work as he continues to write.
Jarmo Pikkujamsa received his DEA from Paris XIII where he studied Francophone and comparative literature. He is interested in diaspora discourses and is currently preparing a PhD degree on how the diasporas are presented in contemporary African literature.
